So far is goodness a mere memory
Or naming of recent scenes of badness
That even these lives, children,
You may pass through to be blessed,
So fair does each invent his virtue.

And coming from a white world, music
Will sparkle at the lips of many who are
Beloved. Then these, as dirty handmaidens
To some transparent witch, will dream
Of a white hero’s subtle wooing,
And time shall force a gift on each.

That beggar to whom you gave no cent
Striped the night with his strange descant.

"My head among the blazing phlox..." Phlox borealis: photo by Ghislain118 (AD), 16 January 2009

................III

Yet I cannot escape the picture
Of my small self in that bank of flowers:
My head among the blazing phlox
Seemed a pale and gigantic fungus.
I had a hard stare, accepting

Everything, taking nothing,
As though the rolled-up future might stink
As loud as stood the sick moment
The shutter clicked. Though I was wrong,
Still, as the loveliest feelings

Must soon find words, and these, yes,
Displace them, so I am not wrong
In calling this comic version of myself
The true one. For as change is horror,
Virtue is really stubbornness

And only in the light of lost words
Can we imagine our rewards.

"...Seemed a pale and gigantic fungus". The common edible field mushroom
(Agaricus campestris) in a meadow to the north of Staunton on Wye: photo by Philip Halling, 3 November 2007

John Ashbery: The Picture of Little J. A. in a Prospect of Flowers, from Some Trees (1956)

What is larger, a mushroom, or a mountain?In the green grass of cloudy homeI dream of a planetwhere we wear tin foil clothing Ray-Ban glassesoh yes that cooland do not know each other at all.We have cool names like Xsway proudly to the music.

In this picture taken Against a background of cloudsIn a green meadow, the commonEdible field mushroom hasThe appearance of a giantFlying saucer that has just touched Down and whose crew is justly nebulousAbout meeting the earthlingsThey have heard so much aboutAnd who are now more than likelyGetting ready to welcome them With another burgeoning giantMushroom.

The Alien visitors had second thoughts from the first, concerning this visit to the Bipedal Nebula.

But they are always accurate in their reports, and, once over the trauma, they beamed back full details of what they had learned: in particular, poetry as an antidote to the terrible custom in their world of taking oneself seriously; in this custom they had (as they honestly admitted in these dispatches), been all

... wrong,Still, as the loveliest feelings

Must soon find words, and these, yes,Displace them, so I am not wrongIn calling this comic version of myselfThe true one.